Health Hazards of Coffee in Styrofoam Cups

Many foods and beverages are served in Styrofoam cups. This is because it tends to keep hot food and drink, hot, and cold food and drink, cold. It's also cheap to manufacture.

But is there any health risks associated with drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup?

The studies are inconclusive. There is no hard evidence that drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups is hazardous to your health.

A main ingredient in Styrofoam is styrene. Styrene is a naturally occurring substance in natural foods such as wheat, beef, strawberries, peanuts and coffee beans. It isn't dangerous to your health.

However, plastic polymers, which are used in the making of Styrofoam cups, can be dangerous to your health. Sometimes people say that their drink (in this case coffee) tastes different when served in a Styrofoam cup. This may be caused by trace elements of polymer getting into the beverage itself.

There is a lot of scare tactic like stuff on the Internet, which tries to say that styrene is harmful to humans. But the truth of it is, that up to this point, it hasn't been proven. In fact, styrene is FDA approved to be used as a food additive.

It also hasn't been conclusively proven that heating a Styrofoam cup of coffee up in the microwave is dangerous to your health.

While drinking from a Styrofoam cup has never been proven to be a health hazard, that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't.

If it makes you feel safer, perhaps try drinking from a hard plastic, or glass cup. After all, it's better to be safe then sorry.